Even in the Darkest Place
by Magnolie
Summary: Modern Day AU: Jaime is abducted and held captive while he works for the American Ambassador in Jordan. While the thought of Cersei and their shared childhood/youth is the only thing that keeps him alive in the dark - Cersei has to cope with her twin and lover being far away from her, possibly already dead. (Rated M for language, swearing and sex, though not graphic).


_Since I've been away to visit friends, I didn't have the time to upload this any sooner._  
_This story is of cours inspired by Jaime's 'abduction' - those of you who have read the books will find some things familiar for the rest of you: Jaime is basically only thinking of Cersei to keep himself alive, something that was terribly neglected on the show._

_Anyway I hope you like it :)_

* * *

**Even in the Darkest Place**

_Where are your now?_  
_Where are you now?_  
_Do you ever think of me,_  
_in the quiet, in the crowd?_

The bad news came when Cersei was least expecting them.

It was one of the last, really sunny days in October and she was upstairs in Myrcella's bedroom, trying to get her daughter to take a nap. The yellow afternoon sun was warm on every carpet and the wooden floor and creating gleaming atmosphere. The whole house was completely silent with Joffrey still at school, Tommen asleep in the room next-door and Myrcella, tired in her arms.

She looked over to the door where she had heard faint steps just a moment ago. She first thought of Jaime who had lately paid her more and more visits in the afternoons – but her twin was thousands of miles away in Jordan right now, working as a translator and consultant for the American ambassador. After a childhood of constant closeness followed by a long period spent apart, their relationship and feelings for each other had slowly started to blossom again.

As a child, she had always been convinced that she would marry Jaime when they had grown up. They had been almost obsessively inseparable as children. Cersei could not remember a single night she had not spent in her brother's bed or he in hers. They had been seventeen when their mother had once come home earlier from work and had found them together on her bed, naked, fucking for the second time that day. When they had been children, she had often discounted their touching and devotion as childish play - but whatever it had been in the beginning, it had now grown into something serious and deep she would no longer accept.

Joanna Lannister had sent her oldest son to a traditional boy's school at the East Coast only a week later. He didn't even come home during the breaks but spent them in Europe with his German girlfriend. Cersei had written a hundred letters to him but never sent a single one, her heart had been too broken and she was not willing to show it, she wasn't sure if she could ever forgive her mother and when she didn't hear of him, she wasn't sure whether she could forgive him leaving her either. After a while, her mother had hired a therapist for her and she had found another boyfriend and another and another until she had met Robert, her future husband, but it had never been any good with anybody else than Jaime.

Her twin had not come to her wedding (that was at least what she first had thought). By then, they had not spoken a word for more than six years and although she had not expected him there, she had found herself crying in front of the mirror all in her wedding-gown on the morning of her wedding. But she was Cersei Lannister and she would not let anybody see her pain. She could not have Jaime anyway.

However, Robert had drunken so much during their wedding-feast, that he had fallen asleep right after he had fucked her emotionlessly. Tired, sad and broken had she lied on their bed until her tears had started to flow again and her mouth was whispering Jaime's name into the empty void of her bedroom. She later had left her husband alone – and found her brother in her childhood room, sitting on the bed they had once shared. That had been when it all had started again. They had shared the small of her old bed that night, never really parting ever again.

Now, thirteen years later, Myrcella was almost half asleep in Cersei's lap and blinked twice as not Jaime, but her other uncle entered the room.

"Cersei, you might want to come downstairs." Tyrion's voice was low and soft and he was holding his smart phone in his right hand, obviously the reason for his disturbance. At that moment she could not see the sorrow on his face or hear it in his voice. No matter how well her relationship to Jaime had developed, her relationship with her youngest brother had always been complicated.

"I'm trying to get her to sleep!" She hissed.

"I'll wait in the kitchen then." He answered and turned around, not giving her the contra as he usually did.

She watched him as he left the room.  
Luckily, Myrcella was already sound asleep in her arms as she laid the nine-year-old down on her bed. The little girl curled up around her favorite pillow and Cersei watched her only daughter for another moment before she was closing her door and leaving.

She crossed the floor and halfway to the staircase she heard her father's voice. He was talking to somebody she could not hear respond while Tyrion seemed to be talking to their mother. The first and sudden thought on her mind was that she had found out about her and Jaime again, that she had found out about the children, finally, and would take them away like she did Jaime.  
Fear was sneaking into her every bone.

"What is this?" she asked when she had reached the living room downstairs.

Uncle Kevan was sitting in the large, green armchair Cersei had inherited from her grandfather, her mother was on the couch, looking into the garden, eyes red. Her father was now outside on the porch, phoning somebody and she could see with Tyrion in the kitchen, fixing himself a glass of scotch.

"Sit down." Her uncle said and stood up, "Robert will be here soon."

_They found out about the children_. She swallowed hard while she could hear the beating of her heart in her ears. She didn't sleep well last night and had actually planned to lie down as well. Something had woken her up around 3 am; a stark pain in her chest that just wouldn't go away for the rest of the night.

"Okay, I'm gonna ask one more time now: What is this?" she was digging her nails into the chair, trembling on the inside.

"Jaime has been taken captive in Iraq last night. Father is talking to the Minister of Foreign Affairs." Tyrion said before he swallowed the scotch at once and glared over to his father.

For a second she relaxed. _They don't know._ But then she realized the meaning of her brother's words. Deep, deep in her heart and flesh they cut her like a knife. Burning tears flooded her eyes while her voice seemed to be stuck in her throat. _No, no, no. Not Jaime._ was the only thing she could think of._ No, no, that's a mistake, just a terrible mistake!_

"No." is the only thing she could say, "That's a mistake. That's a misunderstanding. He's not in Iraq; he called me yesterday from Amman." Her voice was hollow and faint.

"He called you?"

She hadn't seen it but her father had entered the house again and apparently hung up on his phone conversation. This was his ninth year in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and his face is almost sealed and calm.

"Yes of course he called me!" she hissed again, "He calls me every night ever since he's left for Jordan_._" It's horrible enough he could not be with her but how would she ever be able to survive three months without him if she could not even hear his voice?  
_It's a mistake, it's a mistake. They don't have him._

"They sent a video, Cersei." Tyrion said as if he had read her thoughts.

"No." she shook her head in disbelieve, "NO! I want to see it!"

"Believe me; you _don't_ want to see it." Her father said.

"Why? He's my brother, he's my twin, and I have a right to see it!" she yelled.

"And he is _my_ eldest son!" his voice was even louder than Cersei's.

"I don't believe you." She said and wiped the small tears from her eyes, invisible for everybody else in the room.

Tyrion was next to her, putting his hand on her arm but she stood up furiously, casting it off.

"Cersei please…" her mother tried to sooth her.

"I'm gonna call him right now for all of you to see!" She took her phone from the kitchen table and dialed his number. She knew it forwards and backwards by heart.

Cersei looked out into the garden as she heard the first dialing tone. _One.  
_Sun came in through the huge windows but it wasn't warm at all. The air, coming in through the huge glass-doors to the garden was cold and chilly. _Two._  
She couldn't breathe. She would breathe again when he answered and then she would yell at him, tell him to come home right now so she could take him in her arms and lie with him again at night. _Three._  
She could hear Tyrion and her father talking to her to leave it be. _Four._  
But she couldn't, she needed to hear his voice now, tell him that she loved him beg him to come home immediately. _Six._

"Hi, this is Jaime. Leave a message, I'll call back soon."

She let the phone fall out of her hand even before it beeped one last time for her to leave a message.

"No." It was silent and all she could say.

She would not realize and confess it to herself until nightfall. Her mother and father had left again by then. They were flying out to Washington the next morning to 'clear the situation' in the ministry. She still hadn't seen the video.

"They want money," Uncle Kevan had said, "and an exchange of prisoners."

But Cersei didn't care what they want.

"Give it to them!" she had screamed, "Give them whatever bloody thing they want!"

"It's not that easy!" Her father had answered with the same loud voice.

Now, Robert was snoring loudly next to her. He had not come home until her parents had left and just shrugged his shoulders over the matter.

"Some reality can only do him good, or do you want him hopping around the Middle East for the next decade, thinking no one's gonna touch him just because he's Tywin Lannisters oldest?"

Cersei had slapped him right in the face and he had slapped her back. Now they were back in their marriage bed, back to back just as always and Cersei was clinging to her pillow, biting her lip, thinking of Jaime.

The following days passed by quickly and soon they merged into weeks and then a month.

After a while, Robert started to stay at work longer to avoid seeing her. They could never stop fighting when he was home, fighting over Jaime, their blonde children and messed up marriage.

"One could think he was your husband instead of me!" he shouted at her one time they were both drunk (though not together, he had had too much beer at a bar and she had emptied two bottles of Californian wine all by herself).

"I wish he was." Was all she could say in response and either was he too drunk to comment it or he has had one of his seldom bright moments, put one and one together (all the times Jaime was there when he came home from work and how much his sons looked like him and how close he and Cersei sat when they were together) and decided to keep his mouth shut. He had forgotten it all anyway the next morning or at least he had pretended he had.

She missed her twin every day. She could remember the last time they had been together vividly. It was the night before he left for Jordan and they had met in Uncle Kevan's beach house near Muir Beach at the coast. She could still remember all his kisses; feel his hand gentle between her legs and the satisfying feeling of him inside her. She had never in her life felt whole except with him. He had stayed inside her after they had climaxed and she had closed both arms around him begging silently.

"Please don't leave."

He wished he had. The thought of his sweet sister was the only thing that kept him alive in the darkness. Even in the darkest place on earth, he couldn't think of anybody else than her. He could not die here without her, could not give up without seeing her again. She would never forgive him and hunt him down through all seven hells.

It was dark where they kept him and he had not seen sunlight since the day they had taken him off the streets of Rutbah and escorted him to his new home. It was icy cold during the nights and unbearable hot during the days. Sometimes he thought he would suffocate from it. Until now, humiliation and the changing temperatures had been the only torture they had used on him, though he wasn't sure if it would stay that way.

The days were long when there was nothing to do but sitting in the corner of his small cell. At some point he had started something he called 'reconstruction' to not turn mad. He had begun in his early childhood or more precisely the first time he could remember climbing into Cersei's bed at night and sleeping next to her, he must have been two then. He had spent a week on remembering these little things: Him clinging to her when they were separated for whatever reason and giving her small kisses first always on her cheek and then on her soft lips. He also remembered how his mother's friends and other relatives had encouraged them: "Give your sister a kiss Jaime! C'mon. You two are so sweet!"

Maybe that was the reason he and Cersei had never felt that they were doing something wrong but something true and pure. They were meant to be. There was no other way to describe it. It was not them doing something wrong but the rest of the world behaving differently.

He then went on to the beginning of puberty. He remembered how they had both stood in front of a mirror, discovering that they were somehow now developing differently. For a while, Cersei had even refused to let him into her room when she was changing or shushed him out of the bathroom when she was taking a shower.

"But we've always showered together…" were his disappointed words although it didn't take long for him to develop the same behavior for a while until they climbed into each other's beds at night again. How far their nightly 'adventures' went, was something that seemed to be entirely in a blur. All he knew was, that there was no real beginning of it becoming sexually. It had always been a part of it.

After a few weeks he had spent on their first years at school he could remember how they had secretly met in the library during separate classes, sharing sweet little kisses and holding hands for a while until they both had to return to their rooms. He could also remember how they had fumbled and made out behind an old oak tree during recess where they had always stayed undiscovered.

It took him a few days of thinking until he could finally remember their first 'real' time. It had been Late July then, the year that they had turned fifteen. All touching, squeezing and kissing had always had a line until then, a line they had never crossed. She would sometimes touch him until he came warm and silky into her hands and he had kissed her in places that made her shudder and clench inside. Things he counted off as exploration and curiosity.

That day in July, he had just come home from Tennis-training and put his bag besides the table when he had seen her in the door frame to the garden. She was wearing a white dress, all wet and soaked from a light summer rain. It was sticking to her beautiful body that had developed curves during the last years. She was no longer a girl, but a woman. She had taken him through the rain to the pool house without a word, undressed him and guided him to the bed. His sweet, sweet sister.

It took him almost two days to remember every second of that hour they had spent in the pool house but drawing from it during bad days was worth it anyway.

It was Christmas Eve when Cersei left the house again for the first time in days. Temperatures had slowly dropped since the beginning of fall and Cersei had tried to busy herself with tending her garden and cleaning the house.  
"I can't stand my housekeepers anymore." She had told Tyrion once when he had asked whether she was cleaning the kitchen herself.

Now, in late December, they hadn't heard anything from Iraq in a while and her father was expecting her, the children and Robert at their annual Christmas-Dinner with family, friends and almost half of the US-government. She thought about not going. She wasn't sure whether she would be able to look all those people, that weren't doing anything to get her Jaime back, in the eyes.

In the morning she decided to take her children to Muir Beach. During the ride, the thought of telling them the truth about their uncle Jaime crossed her mind twice but she refrained from it. _When he's back, I'll divorce Robert, tell them about Jaime and we will move to some place far off where we can all live together in peace._

It was cold on the beach but Tommen and Myrcella were happy and content running on the sand and fooling around with the water. She sometimes wondered whether they were developing a relationship similar to hers and Jaime's.  
Only Joffrey was silently sitting next to her. He had grown a lot during the last months and getting into trouble more often with his class mates. Some teachers had called her but she had justified his behavior with the current situation. What was she supposed to do? Joffrey would once inherit Robert's business and if Jaime kept on travelling the world or… never came back at all, her father would consider Joffrey as the heir of Lannister Consulting. If he learned how to deal with rivals now, it would probably only do him good.  
He was sitting next to her now, angry or tired or maybe bored – Cersei couldn't tell.

"Why are you so sad?" he asked his mother after a while.

"Because my twin-brother is not here and I don't know when I will see him again. You know that, Joffrey."

"But… he's only your brother." Joffrey was breaking sticks and throwing them away.

"What would you feel if Myrcella were gone, held captive by someone?"

"I would march into their land and kill them all with my own hands."

She laughed a cold laugh.

"I don't have that option, so I can only grief."

"I wouldn't."

She looked at him for a moment. She had always hoped he would turn out like Jaime, gentle and brave. But he was coming right after his mother and maybe his grandfather.

"No, you wouldn't." she said and patted his hair.

He couldn't understand what they were saying but he understood that it was serious and grave. They were discussing something boisterously, probably his attempt to flee. No one of them spoke a word English but he had tried to bribe them anyway using his hands and feet when they cut him loose for the meals. That had been when Wahid (by now he had gotten to know the name of his guard) had just turned around for a second, giving Jaime the chance to run.

They had beaten him until he finally came to question himself what he had been thinking. There were hundreds of men in these caves, what were his chances to escape on his own? Now he had to take the blame for his mindless behavior. And the blame came fast. It wasn't Wahid but one of the other guards he had seen more often lately. He was yelling at him, pointing one finger at him apparently thinking Jaime could understand him. Jaime spoke Arabic, Hebrew and Farsi but these people were speaking Urdu or maybe some other rare dialect.

He only understood when someone else from outside his cell handed him a knife.  
_I can't die here without Cersei._  
The guard took his right hand, pressed it to the wall, yelled again and then he pushed the knife down.

When Jaime came to again, his cell smelled more like iron than it usually did. It took him a few minutes until he could finally open his eyes again. It was dark, just as usual but his hand felt numb and when he lifted it he could see it: They had cut off two of his fingers. The bleeding had long stopped but in this dust it would get infected soon if it had not already. _Damn it._

It was already spring when finally some good news arrived. A team of US-soldiers had discovered a cave-complex near Rutbah. It weren't really good news first, only news that prisoners were presumed to be held captive inside and Jaime might be among them. Cersei didn't give it much attention. She didn't want to get her hopes up for nothing.

Two days passed by until finally, finally Tyrion knocked on her door again. This time she was in her office where pictures of Jaime, Jaime and her, Jaime and the kids and even Jaime, Tyrion and her had outnumbered those of Robert, their parents or friends.

She looked up from one of her old childhood-diaries when he entered the room, reading about better times with Jaime when they were teenagers.

"They got him Cersei. They got him." He said and for the first time in months she was able to breathe again. It seemed as if the breath she had taken in shortly before calling Jaime in the fall had now finally escaped her lungs.

"When does he get here?"

"They're flying him to Germany to check him through and he's going to be here tomorrow morning around 9 if all goes well."

All she could do was nod and Tyrion smiled.

Germany was as dull just as the last time he had seen it together with Briena a few years ago. He didn't get to see much anyway and it was raining. It had rained that whole summer and they had spent it inside her parent's house in Berlin. Briena had been mostly busy with her friends from High School and her Godmother Catleen, not to mention that they had slept in separate rooms and after 4 months of relationship not once shared a bed. He had missed Cersei so much. Her laughter, her body, the way she held him and the way she kissed him. He couldn't tell if he had missed her more then or now. He had wanted to write to her or call her but lost his courage every time he had dialed her number or written a letter. When his father had finally told him she would get married he had burned them all and drank so much his friends had to get him into a hospital.

He was thankful when they finally flew him out to Los Angeles. He couldn't wait to see her now. He had collected every childhood memory in his mind and he would read them all to her like a book before he would propose to her on his knee and he would not count 'no' for an answer. Not another second would they spend apart.

As the plane was slowly taking off, he fell into a light sleep that was filled with visions of Cersei in that white, wet dress so many years ago. It later merged with the images of his rescue from the cave only a week after they had cut off his fingers. The doctor in Tel Aviv, where they had first brought him for medical treatment, had wanted to cut the whole hand off but Jaime had insisted he would try something else, now they could only hope it would get better soon. They had also tended his other wounds and washed him before the people in Rammstein, Germany had checked him through again; allowing him to fly to the States, back to Cersei.

"Mr Lannister…? Jaime?" someone woke him by patting his shoulder.

It was Private Hennigan, a young woman that had escorted him since Iraq and was personally responsible for his save return. She looked a little bit like Briena, he thought, but he was too exhausted and then suddenly excited for Cersei to deepen this thought.

When they finally saw the plane landing on the field before them, Cersei's heart was pounding as hard as never before. The first sunny day of spring was welcoming Jaime home, she thought when they opened the doors for her, her father and mother and Tyrion. They were only allowed to walk so far on the field and had to keep a certain distance to the plane. Slowly, too slowly, a staircase was pushed towards the plane and the door opened.

"Is that him?" her mother asked.

"No, he's much taller than Jaime." Her father replied - they were both standing behind Cersei.

More and more people, all wearing uniforms or suits, were leaving the plane until Cersei saw a small figure in a white shirt and light-brown trousers coming out of the door. He had Jaime's golden hair but he was much thinner now. He looked up into the sun, apparently enjoying it for a second, he then looked towards them and Cersei could see how his mouth formed her name and he started to move faster down the staircase, passing them all one by one.

She started to move in that very same moment. She didn't listen to the man shouting at her to not enter the field and met her twin only seconds later. Jaime hugged her with his left arm, pressing her close to his body, not ever letting her go again.

"I have you back." She sniveled, one hand on his back the other one in his hair.

Jaime had never seen her crying since her wedding-night. He had never expected her to be here. It normally was him, moving towards her - but today, they had both moved to meet in the middle.

"I've missed you so much." He whispered into her ear and kissed her on the cheek and then on the nose. He wanted to kiss her mouth so badly but this was hardly the right time or setting. But then he lowered his head anyway for the fraction of a second, brushing her lips lightly, promising her more for later when they were alone.

"I love you Jaime." She whispered, her hands digging into the flesh of his back, she could not wait to have him in her bed again.

"I love you too." He answered, patting her hair lightly.

And for this very second it didn't matter that they could never truly be together. It could have been worse. But Cersei had never truly left him in the cave. Even in the darkest place on earth, she had been with him, in his heart, by his side.

_Fin._


End file.
